Page 62 of Someone Just Like You

“We did,” both moms said in harmony.

Alison entered the living room clutching something against her chest. “I have one word for you.” Revealing the topless photo of the two of us in the baby pool, she said, “Precious!”

“I’m happy to report Molly has developed since then,” Jude said, squeezing my thigh.

My dad cleared his throat while I buried my head in my hands. Everyone else laughed.

Jude’s dad set the platter of hot hors d’oeuvres on the coffee table. Plucking a pig in a blanket from the top, he said, “I’ll never forget Jude’s first day of first grade. He came home and said Molly wasn’t his friend anymore because she dropped his hand in front of the girl classmates and agreed when they said boys were gross. He insisted he’d hate her forever. We tried to talk him down, but the boy can hold a grudge.”

I gasped, then turned to Jude. “Really?” Was it possible our twenty-year rivalry stemmed from me shunning him in front of a gaggle of six-year-old girls? I didn’t remember the incident, but it rang true given the many other times I had succumbed to peer pressure as a kid.

Jude shrank against the seat cushions and averted his eyes. “I barely remember.”

I held a hand to my heart. “Aw. It was so traumatic, you blocked it out?”

“Don’t make light of dissociative amnesia. It’s a real thing,” said Dean, a physician assistant.

“And I don’t have it. It’s fuzzy, but it’s there. You really hurt my feelings, but there was no way I’d give you the satisfaction of knowing it. Revenge was more my style.”

Jude’s smile was cocky as he said the words, but he’d shown me the sensitive soul behind it. I visualized a six-year-old Jude, his hair in disarray, with a scraped knee and perpetual dirt on his cheek, bruised by the callous and disloyal actions of his best pal. My eyes filled with tears.

Jude smacked his forehead. “Don’tyoucry!I’mthe victim!”

I pushed out my lips. “What’s the accepted timeline for apologies? Because I’m truly sorry.”

Jude glanced at his watch. “Twenty-one years. You just made it.”

I snuggled closer to him and ruffled his hair. “I promise to kiss you in public all the time. I’m here forallthe PDA.”

“Apology accepted.” He wiggled out of my hold and stood.

As I watched him dance his way to the buffet table, something pulled in my chest. I was falling for this man.Hard. When not too long agoI could still summon the bad blood between us like it was happening in real time, I was now detached from it. I recalled the dirty tricks he’d played through a haze of newly discovered lust, which I suspected was rapidly becoming so much more…not so astonishing considering we’d been in each other’s lives forever. I’d absolved him of all his infractions, but had he truly forgiven mine? Was it even possible to forgive a transgression you didn’t know about? The closer we became, the harder it was to keep my secret. So far, he’d been quick to chalk everything up to ancient history, but how many crimes could one person absolve before reaching their threshold?

About two hours later, my mom rubbed her tummy. “Another Blum and Stark Thanksgiving dinner in the books.”

Her statement stung. With the big reveal about Jude and me over and the tryptophan setting in, my parents’ separation was again at the forefront of my mind. “We’ve never had a collective Thanksgiving before. It’s always been our holiday!”

Mom rubbed my back. “You know what I meant.”

I studied her. How was she handling the separationreally? She’d married Dad in her mid-twenties and was now sixty. Did she want to stay single indefinitely or seek a replacement for Dad? And if the latter, was she afraid of re-entering the dating jungle, or had she already joined the number one dating site for singles over fifty? Bias aside, she was way prettier than most women her age, and without the aid of plastic surgery. Coupled with her intelligence and dry wit, her profile would definitely stand out from the others. Something about her appearance was different today. Haircut? Her makeup! “I like the purple shadow.”

She beamed. “You do?”

“Totally. It brings out the blue in your eyes. Dad thinks so too.”Wait. What?

Her brows drew closer. “Really. Your dad said it ‘brought out the blue in my eyes’?”

“Not in those exact words,” I said, chewing on a nail. “But he definitely said your eyes looked pretty.” I lifted my wine to my mouth and gauged her reaction through the glass.

Nicole joined us. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Your baby sister is trying to parent-trap me and your father.” She waved her coffee mug in my face. “I need a refill.”

Nicole cocked her head. “You’re not taking this well, are you?”

I shrugged. “I’m sad. Aren’t you?”

“Of course, but it’s not going to affect our lives on a daily basis.”

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